Monopoly Turns 80: Everything You Didn’t Know About the Iconic Game

The longest official game of Monopoly lasted 70 days

On Thursday, Monopoly celebrates its birthday. Can you guess what number birthday it is? No?

Well, it’s a big one: The game that brought families together – and then slowly tore them apart – with the healing power of capitalism is turning 80 this year. To celebrate, the good folks at Hasbro have provided us with not only scads of trivia about the game, but some photos that show how the now-iconic board game has evolved over the years. Enjoy, and do not collect $200.

Monopoly Game 1936

The game’s inventor, Charles Darrow, first developed Monopoly in 1933, from materials in his own home: the cards were handwritten, and the houses and hotels were made from scraps of wooden molding.

Monopoly Popular Edition Game 1936

Parker Brothers initially rejected the game for “52 fundamental errors” that included the game’s length, theme and complexity. After Darrow successfully sold the game at local Philadelphia department stores, the company reconsidered and negotiated the rights to the game.

Monopoly in 1957

Within a year of its release in the U.S. (it was initially sold for $2), 35,000 copies of the game were being made per week. To date, it’s been published in 47 languages, sold in 114 countries and played by over 1 billion people worldwide. There have been more than 300 licensed versions of the game, including a Braille version and one made from chocolate.

Monopoly in 1962

The longest official game of Monopoly lasted a nightmarish 70 days. The largest took place in 2008, when nearly 3,000 fans united to play the game at the same time. The most expensive version of the game was created by San Francisco jeweler Sidney Mobell in 1998 for $2 million.

Monopoly in 1976

The first Monopoly World Championships took place in 1973 in Liberty, New York. The winner was Lee Bayrd, of the U.S. The last time someone from the U.S. won the World Championships was in 1974. Since then, the games have been held in locations like Tokyo, Monte Carlo and Toronto. The 2015 Monopoly World Championships will be held in Macau, China.

It would be nice if someone could bring the championship back to the U.S. for the game’s 80th birthday. Maybe it’s you.

IKEA: Please Stop Playing Hide-and-Seek in Our Stores

32,000 people signed up to play an in-store game

IKEA is a pretty fun place. But the Swedish furniture store — known for meatballs, ball pits and unpronounceable dressers — has taken a stand against irreverence by banning massive games of hide-and-seek in its Dutch stores, Bloombergreports.

And by massive, we mean 32,ooo people signed up for a Facebook event in Eindhoven; 19,000 in Amsterdam; and 12,000 in Utrecht.

Blockwick, Spring Ninja and Hovercraft are our favorite iPhone games of the week

Blockwick 2

BlockwickBlockwick

Combining elements from much-loved classics, this puzzle game has all the trappings of an old-school handheld title with cleaned up graphics. Join blocks of the same color in order to clear over 160 levels. The design changes as you advance, helpfully keeping your eyes fresh so you don’t get that sense of fatigue that comes with so many puzzlers.

Spring Ninja

Spring NinjaSpring Ninja

Spring Ninja is an adorable runner-type game in which you control a ninja with springs beneath its feet, jumping from column to column in order to beat your high score. It’s a challenge to jump from one to the next without falling off or overshooting the next platform, meaning it takes a considerable amount of practice to master the art of hitting your next landing spot.

Hovercraft – Build Fly Retry

HovercraftHovercraft

Hovercraft is the battlebots of racing games: Design your own vehicle and see how it fares on the racetrack. It’s based on pared down principles of physics, but is still a lot of fun to see which absurd designs can keep afloat while reducing drag and picking up the most speed. Oh, and if you like explosions, this game is full of them.

Lastronaut

LastronautLastronaut

An endless runner game with an arcade backdrop, Lastronaut tells the story of a world overrun by a mechanical army that must be destroyed. Jump, run, dodge, and attack wave after wave of enemy forces as you run through the map. Pick up robot weapons and different gear in order to last as long as you possibly can.

Saboteur Diver

Saboteur Diver

If you’ve ever dreamed of sneaking behind enemy lines to conduct spy missions, then Saboteur Diver is a great game for your iPhone. Assume the role of a diver who must go undetected to sabotage enemy subs and ships in an alternate reality setting. The challenge? Make sure to avoid the searchlights.

Play the Best New iPhone Puzzle Games

Ones

Ones

Ones is essentially a maddening version of 2048. Combine three or more identical blocks in order to create the next block. The goal is the mash enough blocks together and align them well enough so that you can reach the highest numbered block possible. You will spend hours trying to top your high score, and then, once you do, will spend hours more trying to do the same again.

Deeply Absurd Chain

Deeply Absurd Chain

I am immediately fond of any game that embraces its own absurdity on the most superficial level. At first, this plays like most match games—the basic principle of which is to line up as many similar items in a row. But in Deeply Absurd Chain, matching items only reveals the next link in the chain, allowing for far more complicated moves. It’s a game that sends you down a rabbit hole of cartoonish puzzling with an archeological theme.

Atomas

AtomasAtomas

One of the best-designed games this month, Atomas is a puzzle game based in chemistry. Start with very basic elements and then try to get them to bond to one another to form precious metals like gold from your collection of bonded atoms. But don’t let your screen get too crowded with elements. You’ll learn about the periodic table, but you won’t become the next Walter White.

Under the Sun

Under the Sun

In Under the Sun, the goal is to lead your character through a series of puzzle-based desert island maps. In this 3D puzzle game, try to navigate natural obstacles such as trees and rocks in order to get to reach your fire before it gets dark. But every move you make alters the map just a bit. Thankfully, you can tinker with time and go backwards if you make a mistake.

TWIST3D

TWIST3D

Somewhere between a game of Tetris and a frustrating few hours spent with a Rubik’s Cube, TWIST3D is a puzzle game in which you must twist a 3D cube-like map in order to reveal patterns and match gems that only reveal themselves once a pattern is detected. You can use boosters to help you sort out the cube, but this game is only for those who are exceptionally skilled puzzle-solvers — those quick to anger should steer clear.

Try Evoland, with graphics that evolve as you defeat your enemies.

Evoland

EvolandEvoland

At first, Evoland feels like an overhead-view 8-bit GameBoy title. But as you progress, the graphics become more advanced until you find yourself playing a very modern-looking game. Navigate a world that feels an awful lot like early Zelda games; Evoland is all about battles, bosses, weapons, and working your way through difficult maps.

ZigZag

ZigZagZigZag

ZigZag is part arcade game, part puzzle. It’s a test of endurance, patience, and whether you can keep yourself from throwing your phone across the room after losing. The goal is to guide a ball down an obstacle course by tapping your screen. Sound easy? It’s not. The difficulty lies in keeping your ball from falling off the edges of the map.

Ramboat

RamboatRamboat

Ramboat is a marriage between puns and violence. Your character, based on the Sylvester Stallone classic Rambo, is in charge of an airboat that cruises through different maps while fighting enemies. Unlock new characters, vehicles, and weapons as you battle your way through various levels, working your way around obstacles and collecting powerups on the way. A good game for level-headed buttonmashers.

Sinking Feeling

Sinking Feeling

When developers merge entertainment with inanity, their games are often gems. Sinking Feeling definitely falls into that category. Control a little ball that falls from an endless ceiling while deciding to avoid glass panels or power through and shatter them. It’s so poorly designed that you can’t fault the graphics for their simplicity; instead, you’ll just love the game’s action.

Clumsy Knight vs. Skeletons

Clumsy Knight vs. Skeletons

A game for all the adults out there who still love children’s cartoons, Clumsy Knight vs. Skeletons is an RPG tale of a knight clumsier than Don Quixote on a quest to destroy skeletons and save the world. Upgrade your armor, weapons, and abilities as you advance. The storyline is endearing, the animation charming, and the gameplay a lot of fun.

TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary and expertise on the most compelling events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. To submit a piece, email ideas@time.com.

And many, many other MS-DOs games

Hitch up your oxen, find some water barrels and get ready for some westward expansion because Oregon Trail is now available to play online — for free.

The Internet Archive, which is best known for running the world wide web’s time capsule, The Wayback Machine, has put the game that traumatized countless children of the ’80s and ’90s online. That means future generations can feel the oppressive horror of attempting to fight their way across the Oregon Trail on a steady diet of squirrel meat with only an axe, some rope and frequent bouts of dysentery, pausing in their manifest destiny only long enough to etch grandma’s epitaph on a makeshift tombstone on the side of the trail. Fun, right?

Of course, Oregon Trail isn’t the only game available. There’s also Duke Nukem, Street Fighter, Burger Blaster, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Lion King and Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer and more than 2,393 other MS-DOS based game titles ready to play in an immersive and engaging lesson in interactive internet preservation.

The online arcade is a “software crate-digger’s dream: Tens of thousands of playable software titles from multiple computer platforms, allowing instant access to decades of computer history in your browser,” the archive wrote. And they definitely want people to play the games, but be prepared to offer feedback. According to a post announcing the new resource, the site’s software curator Jason Scott wants people to reach out and report bugs as they play. “Some of [the games] will still fall over and die, and many of them might be weird to play in a browser window, and of course you can’t really save things off for later, and that will limit things too. But on the whole, you will experience some analogue of the MS-DOS program, in your browser, instantly,” Scott wrote.

Here’s What the Most Jaw-Dropping Game of 2015 Looks Like Up Close

UK-based Hello Games released another trailer for its highly-anticipated upcoming PC and PS4 title, No Man’s Sky. The game, slated for a 2015 release, is a procedurally generated space exploration game with stunning visuals. In other words, players will be able to explore planets and solar systems that are randomly generated. The results continue to look promising; here’s a closer look.

Popular Among Subscribers

The realities of distance have long dictated that my time spent among family is somewhat limited to a couple weeks in total each year. My people of origin all live in South Florida, while I am in Boston, and although my in-laws in upstate New York are closer, they’re still far enough away, and everyone involved is so busy, that visits are special occasions and not predictable occurrences.

I miss them, enormously, all the time. Because of this, it’s actually pretty rare that I ignore anyone when we’re visiting, given that I treasure and cherish every moment with my beloved family.

But, you know, even I have my limits.

Sometimes, surrounded by people who love you, or at least people to whom you are related, you just want to put your head down and do something, anything other than listen to your cousin talk about her wedding plans for an hour, or your aunt ranting on with her offensive politics from 1953, or have to answer intrusive questions about your professional/marital/reproductive prospects. Sometimes you want to put on some headphones and just ignore everyone just for a bit. I am here for you. It’s OK.

(My husband writes about video games for a living, and when I told him about my “ignoring your family” angle, he called me a cynical jerk. That’s probably a fair assessment. But I thought it was funny.)

I first saw Monument Valley at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, and I was mesmerized. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when it received a bunch of positive attention right away, and went on to win a 2014 Apple Design Award.

Monument Valley follows Princess Ida on a journey through meticulously designed environments, in which the architecture hides puzzle solutions in optical illusions that borrow liberally from the work of M.C. Escher. In each chapter, you help Ida on her travels by pressing switches and rotating pathways and staircases to create a path for her to follow, and the solutions are elegant and often surprising.

Beautifully surreal, slow-paced, simple to learn and with a soundtrack like aural Valium, it’s an easy game to get lost in. Happily, new chapters are now available.

Device 6 is similarly lauded and similarly surreal, but in some very different ways. A sort of hybrid visual novella and game, Device 6 tells the story of a woman called Anna, who wakes up in a castle on a mysterious island with no recollection of how she got there.

Device 6 dispenses with typical running/jumping game mechanics in favor of a more intuitive approach in which the text itself is the playing field. You read it as much as you play it, and the puzzles give the distinct feeling that you’re a detective collecting and analyzing clues to a much bigger mystery, rather than simply looking for the right random solution. And it is stylish as fuck, with a swingy midcentury vibe that somehow underscores how freaking creepy it can occasionally get.

Oh, what’s that? You’re a total freakbrain nerdo who’s captivated by the more meta-level questions of What Is A Game and What Is Fun and Why Does Anything Exist Anyway? ME TOO. This is a thing you will like!

Sometimes You Die has been a bit of a surprise hit this year, given that it is actually a minimalist question with no answer, given game form. Typically, “dying” in a game is a momentary setback, but in Sometimes You Die, death is a necessary part of success, as you must litter the screen with your corpses to carve a path to follow from level to level. (Your corpses are just little black blocks so this is less gory than it might sound.)

What you wind up with is an existential query into the nature of play that also manages to be fun and surprisingly difficult to put down.

First off, Tengami is beautiful. Taking its design from traditional Japanese arts and crafts, you guide a character through a pop-up book world in which you flip pages and slide tabs to discover hidden passages and other secrets.

This is a contemplative puzzle-solving experience that is more style than substance, so if you’re looking for a deeply compelling narrative, you’re better off with other games on this list. But as a chill, low-thinking break from holiday madness, it certainly does the job. And not only is Tengami pretty to look at, the soundtrack is gorgeous as well.

Moving from really relaxing to really really really not, The Last Door is a retro-styled old school point-and-click horror game that is legitimately terrifying. I still hold a special place in my heart for 8-bit games, but even I was surprised by how frightening this game could be, given that the graphics are limited to a heap of loosely arranged pixel chunks. It really makes the point that, in the right hands, lifelike visuals aren’t necessary to sustain an atmosphere of terror.

Set in England of 1891, you play as Jeremiah Devitt, who is investigating the suicide of an old friend, and as he digs up his past, things take an otherworldly, almost Lovecraftian turn. The Last Door owes a significant debt to adventure games of the ’80s and ’90s, and it manages to feel both nostalgic and new at the same time. You explore locations looking for items and clues at your own pace, and solve puzzles to move the plot forward.

Also, The Last Door uses an episodic format, so new pieces of the story are still being made.

A Dark Room has no graphics at all. It is a game that uses only text to tell its story; even the pseudo-graphical “map” you use to explore beyond your campsite is drawn with letters and punctuation marks describing the landscape, ASCII-style. It has no sound design. In the way of traditional resource-management games, it consists of tapping things on your screen to get other things, but it evolves into a role-playing game as well before long in which you’re battling enemies and exploring spooky caves, crumbling houses and abandoned mines.

All this you get to imagine in your head, because like I said: no graphics. Add a dark, convoluted story that is somehow all the more compelling for the lack of concrete details it provides, and you’ve got a minimalist masterpiece.

It is also weirdly addictive. The first time I played A Dark Room months ago, I suddenly realized I’d been sitting on the couch for three hours amassing wood and meat for I don’t even remember what. It seemed very important at the time.

There is also a prequel, The Ensign, that has recently come to the App Store. Enjoy both, and forget your family is even in the room with you.

TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary and expertise on the most compelling events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. To submit a piece, email ideas@time.com.